Hey. Idea. (actual economists, you should probably look away. this'll make you twitch.)

How's about instead of trying to figure out stupid economic stimulus CRAP packages and fighting over OMG SOCIALIST ACK and UGH INBRED OSTRICHES, listen to this:

how much student loan do you have left? The Boy and I have a cubic shitload. a metric fuckton. a. lot. of. debt. I'm betting we're not the only ones. here's my economic stimulus package: Forgive it. Hell, even keep it, but just make it interest-free. I understand that part of the problem is bad things the banks etc have to deal with...but isn't that why the whole refinancing thing is legal? some money is better than no money? And I don't pretend to be an economist. at all. I'm sure my thoughts and angry mutterings have very logical, perfectly reasonable reasons why things are the way they are, or why it can't change to the ways suggested. I try to educate myself more about economics but seriously: I tried listening to two economists and bill maher last night and couldn't stay awake. or concentrate. after 5 minutes. and that's with bill's annoying-entertaining commentary.

but $716.62 dollars a month is $8,599.44 a year. that is a lot of cash. That's a lot of money that could be going into our local community. into our savings. into better health insurance than the crap I get from work. (and yeah, how ironic is it that an EMS company gives its employees crap insurance? ok, so not many people rely on the ridiculous eye coverage that I do, but still.) maybe you've got less. maybe it's only 500 a month. that's still 6,000 dollars. and how many students graduate with that amount of debt each year? 8 million? (8,666,000 attended a 4 year school in 2006, according to NCES,) even if only half of them have debt, and it's baby debt- say 200/mo- that's 9.6 billion dollars. 24 billion dollars if they've got a 500/mo payment. in one year. it'll take us 10 years to pay off everything assuming the interest doesn't change. say it only takes 6 years to pay off the baby debt. 57.6 billion dollars (over 6 years), all paid by those hypothetical 4 million graduates. I know that's a drop in the bucket to the government, but still.